Monken brings option, wins back to Georgia Southern

Twenty-one years ago, Jeff Monken got his first coaching job as a graduate assistant at the University of Hawaii. There, he met an offensive coordinator named Paul Johnson.

It was the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship.

Monken followed Johnson and his triple-option offense to Georgia Southern in 1997. In five seasons there, he was part of a 62-10 record and two national championships at a school that has won a total of six I-AA titles and eight Southern Conference championships.

"We had guys that were completely bought into the program and had experienced success, and they didn't want that success to disappear," Monken said. "They wanted to continue and carry on the legacy and carry on the tradition. ... They thought that they were supposed to win when they took the field on Saturday. It didn't matter if they were playing the Green Bay Packers. They thought they were supposed to win the football game."

In his first season as Eagles head coach, Monken has brought back both the option offense and the winning attitude it helped foster to a program that went 11-11 in the past two seasons. Georgia Southern (8-4) beat South Carolina State 41-16 last weekend for its first playoff win since 2002 and takes on William and Mary (8-3) in Saturday's second round at Zable Stadium.

"I learn every day, and I learn more and more," Monken said. "I make mistakes, but a lot of the experience I have with Coach Johnson I can draw from.

" … The thing I appreciated so much about him was not only the fact that I thought he was an outstanding X's and O's coach, but he really got the best out of our teams. He was a tough coach. He was a disciplinarian. He pushed our teams and set high standards and was tough, and I think our teams were tough because of the standards he set. I hope that our teams carry some of those same traits."

Monken spent 13 seasons with Johnson, going with him to Navy and then to Georgia Tech before returning to Statesboro last November.

Three hours northwest in Atlanta, Johnson has kept track of his former pupil's progress.

"He's excited, and everybody down there is excited about the return of the offense and the return to the playoffs," Johnson said. " … Jeff's a hard worker, and he's got a good personality. He does well around people. If you're willing to work hard and you've got a plan and a philosophy and you work toward it, I think you've got a great chance to be successful."

Driving the Eagles' success is the nation's fourth-best rushing game, averaging 255.8 yards per game. Six players, led by Georgia Tech transfer Jaybo Shaw's 162 carries at quarterback, have 50 or more rushing attempts. Freshman fullback Robert Brown averages a team-best 72.7 yards per game, while slot backs Darreion Robinson and J.J. Wilcox, Shaw's pitchmen, combine to average 58.2.

"It's like a basketball team where there's five guys averaging 10 or 11 points a game," Tribe defensive coordinator Bob Shoop said. "You go, 'Hey, none of them are awesome,' but then all of a sudden you go, 'But they're all good.' "

Johnson, 127-46 as a head coach after the Yellow Jackets' 6-6 season, is the modern-day option godfather. Though some of his early Hawaii offenses were pass-happy, Johnson has seen the appeal of the pitch since he coached the defensive line at Georgia Southern in the early 1980s.

"I always thought, when I was coaching defense, that was one of the hardest things to defend was the option with two wide receivers, so we just kind of incorporated some stuff and piggybacked off other people, what they had done, and came up with our system," he said.

It was the system Monken turned to when he took over at Georgia Southern, and it's the system he thinks will return the Eagles to the glory days of Johnson's tenure.

"It's what I know best and what I have the greatest amount of faith in," Monken said. " … Here at Georgia Southern, it's really become a part of our identity."